At the same time, the golden-furred giant ape let out a furious roar, opened its mouth, and spat a beam of incredibly thick golden light toward the woman in the sky.
The ape itself, however, tumbled through the air, and amid a thunderous boom, transformed into a colossal silver Roc with four wings, arcs of silver lightning crackling across its body.
The Roc merely spread its four wings and dissolved into a strand of greenish-white light that pierced into the void. Several hundred zhang away, spatial fluctuations rippled and the strand of light reappeared—but the moment it trembled, it vanished once more.
Transformed into the four-winged Roc, his escape speed was so extraordinary that even the combined pursuit of the three Blood Light incarnations from that last encounter had been unable to catch up to him for a time. He was therefore brimming with confidence in his speed.
The slender woman in the sky waved one hand, and a jet-black sword beam descended from above, easily cleaving apart the golden light column that had shot toward her.
But in that brief moment of delay, the Roc had already put an enormous distance between them, reduced to nothing more than a faint dark speck in the distance.
"Think you can run? Since this seat has laid eyes on you, I won't merely extract your soul and refine your spirit—no, nothing so simple will suffice!" The woman in the sky swept her gaze toward the distant black speck, her eyes flickering with cold light as she spoke in an icy tone.
She then extended one hand downward and beckoned. The ground below rumbled, and two colossal stone figures rose fully into view from underground. Under the woman's command, they flew up into the air simultaneously, their forms merging in an uncanny convergence into a massive sphere of grey-white light that blazed with blinding radiance.
At that moment, the woman's figure shifted, transforming into a column of black gas that surged into the enormous light sphere and vanished within it in a flash.
Within the span of a few breaths, the searing brilliance receded, and hovering in midair was a stone palace several dozen zhang tall.
The palace was entirely grey-white, with over a dozen thick, rough-hewn pillars standing in a stark row, lending it a raw, primordial beauty all its own.
The woman stood gracefully in the center of the palace. With a delicate tap of her jade-like foot against the stone floor, she uttered a single word: "Chase."
The surface of the stone palace immediately shimmered with a layer of hazy white spiritual light. After a single tremor, it shot forward like a meteor pursuing the moon, racing straight after Han Li.
Though the stone palace appeared ungainly, once it moved, it crossed a hundred zhang in a single bound—its speed was no slower than Han Li's four-winged Roc form by any meaningful margin.
Han Li, hurtling through the sky at top speed, naturally noticed this as well. His heart clenched with shock, but it only made him more determined not to stop and engage his pursuer in a reckless fight.
This woman was clearly no ordinary Demon Race Sovereign. He had no intention of risking a life-and-death struggle while the Chaos Qi was already in hand and his condition was less than ideal.
What was more, the aura emanating from this woman not only made him feel an extreme sense of danger, but also carried a trace of familiarity!
Until he could determine this woman's identity, Han Li was even less inclined to rashly enter into combat with her.
Even if his Roc form was only marginally faster than her pursuit, as long as enough time elapsed, he would naturally have a chance to shake her off entirely.
And so, despite the myriad questions swirling through his mind, Han Li did nothing but pour all his effort into driving his Magical Power and frantically beating his four wings to flee forward.
At the staggering speeds the two were traveling, half an hour had carried them well over a million li from where they had started.
By this point, Han Li had pulled ahead of the stone palace by several dozen li.
That distance would have seemed impossibly far to any mortal, but to beings of Han Li's stature, it could be closed in the span of a brief moment.
But regardless, the gap was widening little by little, and Han Li's heart finally relaxed somewhat. His thoughts turned to pondering exactly who the woman chasing him might be.
At the same time, inside the stone palace behind him, the blue-robed woman had already seated herself upon a stone chair in the center of the great hall, her cool gaze fixed unblinkingly in the direction of her pursuit.
"Hmph. That human brat was nothing more than an insignificant insect in the lower realm all those years ago. In barely over a thousand years, he has actually advanced to mid-stage Integration and learned such astonishing transformation arts. It seems he can't be underestimated entirely. But to think that a few trivial abilities like these would be enough to escape from under this seat's nose—that's nothing short of delusional."
The woman's beautiful face darkened as she muttered a few words to herself, then suddenly barked out a sharp command:
"Shi Gan, you two—begin teleportation immediately! This should be more than enough time for you to have locked onto his position!"
"Understood, Lord
"A single li is nothing at all—more than close enough for me to intercept that boy. Begin the transmission now!" The woman dismissed the concern without a moment's thought, issuing her order with decisive finality.
"Yes!"
This time, the giant face offered no further words and promptly obeyed.
The very next instant, the stone palace—which had been hurtling through the sky at tremendous speed—suddenly lurched to a halt in midair.
Then, amid chanting in two sets of bizarre and alien incantations, spiritual light rippled across the surface of the palace and dense clusters of five-colored runes surged into view.
These runes were profoundly mysterious and abstruse. Under the incantations' resonance, they blazed with sudden brilliance, broke free from the palace, and scattered in all directions. Spinning rapidly in the air, they coalesced into an enormous five-colored runic formation that spanned the surrounding void.
The stone palace sat precisely at the center of this formation. With a flash of resplendent radiance, it vanished without a trace.